By: Rabbi Seth Grauer

Click here to watch the address, which was delivered at BAS Graduation 2021 on June 14, 2021.

In the famous city of Chelm, the villagers had a terrible problem. There was a small bridge running over a river, but the bridge had a hole in it. And the villagers kept stepping into the hole, falling, injuring themselves and sometimes even breaking their legs. No one knew what to do. Finally, someone suggested they should go ask the rabbi, but the rabbi was out of town, so they convened the Council of Elders and brought the problem to them.

One elder got up and said: “I have the solution! We should build a hospital under the bridge!” Everyone applauded this wise solution and the people of Chelm began building their hospital.

For many of us (especially here in Toronto), these last 12 months have felt like Chelm. I am not here to criticize anyone, but we all know there have decisions that have seemed as if they were coming from Chelm.

Now, I promised my wife, Leba, that I would not speak too much about COVID – she told me everyone is sick of hearing about COVID – so I want to speak about life after COVID. And to you, our graduates, I want you to know that I believe you have an incredible responsibility – perhaps greater than any graduating class before you.

The belief of many that we are currently living in Chelm has contributed to a culture that had already been developing, growing, and pushing so much cynicism, criticism, negativity and overall dissatisfaction and unhappiness within our lives. This unhappiness, frustration and constant complaining is felt everywhere.

What is worse, you are graduating at a time when civil dialogue and hearing other’s perspectives is so hard. This was happening prior to COVID particularly within the world of “cancel culture”, but the last year-and-a-half of COVID has exacerbated this problem in a terrible way.

Quick review for anyone who still is not familiar: “cancel culture” is the movement in which someone is thrown out of a position, completely ostracized, or “cancelled,” because of her or his views or something they have said. In a cancel culture, we appoint ourselves as arbiters of right and wrong, judge and jury and thanks to social media we are able to administer sweeping and uncompromising punishment. Cancel culture has played a significant role in destroying the ability for open debate and a complete intolerance for other people’s views.

I, of course, am not condoning hateful and dangerous speech, and there is no better time to reflect upon this than during the Three Weeks which we will soon be entering.

In a beautiful interview last year, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks zt”l, whose memory I would like to honour, commented on Cancel Culture (and I am paraphrasing):

It used to be that we can disagree with someone’s acts and criticize what he does without devaluing the person. We are losing that distinction and that ability.

It is so hard for us to listen respectfully to people we disagree with and ask them to listen respectfully to us as well.

Rabbi Sacks explained that:

Americans after Pearl Harbour realized they had to wage war against a country they did not understand so Ruth Benedict explained to them that the big difference is that Japanese culture is a shame culture and in America we have a guilt culture.

In America, you can forgive someone because you can separate the person from the act. An individual who does something wrong can still very much be a wonderful person who unfortunately made a mistake in life.

But a shame culture is unforgiving so if you have been shamed, explains Rabbi Sacks, you go off quietly and disappear or perhaps worse, because there is no returning from Shame.

Rabbi Sacks lamented his fear that we are entering a “shame culture” and shame cultures do not have space for forgiveness. And in a world where everything is remembered and recorded on the internet, in the words of Rabbi Sacks:

We have abandoned forgetfulness, so we better well get back forgiveness.

My dear Graduates: I am raising this now, because we need your help to bring back civil discourse and the ability to tolerate opposing views.

Without getting into Israeli politics – look at what was going on in the Knesset yesterday and consider your generation’s responsibility to bring civil discourse back. And that is not to say we don’t have so much to be proud of. Irrespective of what you feel about Bibi and how the election went – how incredible is it that we have a dati Israeli Prime Minister who wears a kipa sruga! That fact alone should be a moment to celebrate. But while I believe it deserves incredible attention particularly to you, our Bnei Akiva Schools community, I think this message is much more crucial to each of you right now.

This past Shabbat, we read of Korach and his rebellion.

The Mishna in Pirkei Avot (5:20) famously calls the machloket between Korach and Moshe and Aharon a machloket shelo leshem shamayim and contrasts it with the machloket between Hillel and Shammai which the Mishna describes as being leshem shamayim, for the sake of Heaven.

Many derashot have been written over the differences between these two machlokot, yet I have a very simple – but somewhat obvious – question: why is Korach’s machloket described as “machloket Korach vechol adato” (and his people)? Should it not have said it was a “machloket between Korach and Moshe and Aharon,” similar to how the machloket between Hillel and Shammai is described as a machloket between Hillel and Shammai?

Rav Shimon Schwab, the famous German rabbi who became the leader of the Washington Heights Jewish community in New York, writes in his sefer on Chumash that when it comes to a machloket that is truly leshem shamayim, the goal is to arrive at the truth. And since the goal is to arrive at the truth, both sides need to be heard and both sides need to be carefully considered. However, in a machloket that is not leshem shamayim, the goal is not truth, and one side is not interested in what the other side is saying. Korach and his followers were not interested in what Moshe and Aharon had to say. Korach and his followers simply wanted to fight and argue.

There is a fascinating Ramban on Parshat Korach in which he describes how there were so many different voices in this rebellion – and in many ways they all were upset about different things:

  • Korach, of course, who wanted power;
    Shevet Levi, because Korach is a Levi and because Levi was upset at being passed over by the Kohanim;
  • The 250 people who were separated as a group and complaining for some reason; and
  • Datan and Aviram because they came from Shevet Reuven and were insulted that they lost the bechora.

Even Am Yisrael at one point, when HaKadosh Baruch Hu tells Moshe to walk away from Klal Yisrael as they are described as rebelling in their own right because they just found out that they aren’t going in Israel, but they will instead wander in the desert for the next 40 years, and of course, they blame Moshe.

Each has their own reason to be angry and each has their own reason to rebel. But they are united around a common complaint around disenfranchisement, feelings of marginalization and overall basic frustration with their lot in life. None of these groups were able to live lives of hope, optimism, positivity and overall menuchat hanefesh.

As Rabbi Sacks wrote last year:

Korach was swallowed up by the ground, but his spirit is still alive and well.

Please listen carefully: We are all products of our environment and right now our environment is impacting us in at least three key ways:

  • There is so much cynicism, criticism and judgmentalism even within our own larger Jewish community which has been heightened all year because of COVID.
  • A Cancel Culture that continues to get stronger and a corresponding inability to have civil dialogue today; and
  • We are living in the world in which we see so many different groups constantly being brought together simply because the only trait they share is overall collective unhappiness.

When you combine all of that – this all contributes to so much fighting, argumentation and ultimately, frustration and negativity among so many.

Graduates, iy”H, most of you will learn in Israel next year, for which we are so very proud. But eventually you will enter university where so many are “cancelling” or turning people into non-persons – sometimes for good reason (i.e., sexual harassment or the like), but sometimes simply because they said something that might have gone against what Rabbi Sacks called the “moral fashion of the moment.”

Let us remember the Gemara in Eiruvin (13b) that praises Beit Hillel because they were kind, modest and so humble that they put the ideas of Beit Shammai before their own.

My dear Graduates – don’t allow yourselves to be “cancelled,” but equally, don’t cancel others. You just made it through the two most challenging high school years that high schools have ever experienced, and yet – you hopefully still have your heads held high with smiles and positivity.

Listen to others, care, be compassionate and most important – cultivate the positive, optimistic, hopeful feelings that I know you all have inside you. You each have your own wisdom and incredible inner strength. Always remember to be guided by our Torah and Mitzvot. Strive to be happy and do not allow cynicism and negativity to ruin your positive energy.

We began with Chelm – because I know how much so many of you feel we are still living in Chelm all around us, but we need to be positive. Let us therefore end with Chelm, too, and hopefully try and smile a bit more and laugh a bit more.

A group of villagers were busy digging a foundation for the new synagogue, when a disturbing thought occurred to one of the workers. “What are we going to do with all this earth we’re digging up?” he asked. “We certainly can’t just leave it here where our shul will be built.”

The men stopped working to ponder this challenging question. Suggestions were made and just as quickly each was rejected. Suddenly, one of the villagers held his hand up for silence. “I have the solution,” he proclaimed. “We’ll make a deep pit and put all this dirt that we’re digging up into this pit!”

A round of applause greeted this proposal, until another villager raised his voice in protest. “That won’t work at all! What will we do with the earth from that pit?” There was a stunned silence as the men tried to grapple with this new problem, but the first individual soon provided the answer.

“It’s very simple,” he said. “We’ll dig another pit, and into that one, we’ll shovel all the earth we’re digging now and all the earth we take out of the first pit. We must just be careful to make the second pit twice as large as the first one!”

There was no arguing with this wisdom, and the workers returned to their digging – happy, content and ready to keep going.